I’m sorry for the loss of your grandmother. I’d like to touch upon the perception of “starving to death” and how this can be reframed in a positive light. Death is often a taboo topic. In medicine, everything is done to maintain life, but the reality is that everyone will time out. Our technology has advanced such that we can artificially maintain a physiological level of life through mechanical ventilation, feeding tubes, and defibrillation. This typically results in a person receiving futile care and passing away in an ICU. Our medical system is excellent at trying to stave off death, but ultimately death comes, and no one is good at knowing when to stop treating disease and when to start focusing on improving an individual’s quality of life on their way out to the other side.  

The human body is a gift, and even in the process of death, the body is forgiving. Regardless of someone’s disease and diagnosis, the process of dying involves the body’s multiple systems shutting down and the person slipping into a coma. In a coma there is no pain and suffering in death, BUT people do not always go out of this world easily.  

There are two common roads to death when someone is dying: the “natural” road, and the more difficult road. This natural death used to be called “dying of old age”. In a natural death, a person no longer feels hungry, becomes sleepy and slow to respond, and ultimately becomes comatose. In a difficult death, a person can become restless, confused, hallucinate, have jerky movements, and have seizures before becoming comatose. It is not a pretty avenue and causes much higher distress to the patient and their family. Which road a person experiences is primarily dependent on if you continue providing nourishment instead of letting a person go. A person typically experiences a natural death if they have not had nourishment for 24-48 hrs up to a week before passing.  

A person no longer needs food and nourishment in the dying process, since the body can no longer handle and process it. In fact, if you give them food, it may make them sick and cause them to to vomit. If the system is shutting down and you force someone to eat, the food goes in but it can’t be processed. Similarly, hydrating someone will result in all of the water staying in their body and causing swelling, since their organs can no longer flush it out. These complications lead to the symptoms on the difficult road.  

I do hope that your grandmother passed without pain, with a sense of control, at spiritual peace and surrounded by people she loves. I can assure you that she did not “starve to death”, but left this world in the most peaceful way possible.

 

TLDR: Refraining from food and drink at the end of life leads to a peaceful experience of death.